‘It’s My Life’ winners to help make NZ smokefree

A Fiordland high school student has
been named the supreme winner of Massey University’s
‘It’s My Life’ competition for an innovative app that
will help young people to quit smoking and stay
smokefree.

The nationwide competition asked New Zealanders
aged between 12 and 24 to create a poster, video or app that
inspired young people to support a smokefree New Zealand by
2025.

Seventeen-year-old Nicholas Humphries from Fiordland
College created the Quit Toolbox, a fully functional smart
phone app for Android using Titanium Appcelerator, an open
source software development kit.

The judges said the
sophisticated app was an impressive achievement for someone
still at school, especially given that Nicholas had written
all the programming himself.

The Quit Toolbox features
include a ‘Commit to Quit’ button, tips delivered by
SMS, links to smokefree organisations and information, a
direct dial to Quitline, and interfaces with social media so
those trying to give up can share their successes and call
on their networks for support when needed.

Nicholas said
he was ecstatic to win both the high school category and the
overall prize, which brought his total prize money to
$2,100.

“I’m completely self-taught and while I’ve
been programming in my spare time for about four years to
create Android apps, this is the first time I have worked
with software that can create both Android and IOS apps,”
he said. “I’m thinking about using some of my prize
money to buy a Mac so I can create IOS apps in the
future.”

After teaching himself to use Titanium
Appcelerator, Nicholas estimates it took him two weeks to
develop the Quit Toolbox. He is definitely considering a
career in software engineering.

The ‘It's My Life’
competition was part of a broader Massey University campaign
and research project funded by the Ministry of Health to
create smokefree messages for youth, by youth. The project
has funding to develop Nicholas’ design into a useable app
that will become publicly available.

He will be mentored
by Massey multimedia systems engineering expert Associate
Professor Wyatt Page and the Ministry of Health has agreed
to explore the opportunities for using and promoting the
app.

“I’m so excited about the opportunity to be
mentored and to get this app to a stage where it’s useful
to people,” Nicholas said. “This competition was
absolutely perfect for me because it combined my interest in
programming and technology with a desire to do something
with real meaning.

“Smoking is such a negative thing so
it’s satisfying to do something that can help. I’m happy
to work on the app in my holidays so hopefully it can be
released later this year.”

The winners of the ‘It’s
My Life’ competition will be announced at a series of
Smokefree Summits on Massey’s three campuses, which will
include international speakers, bands, games, smokefree
organisation stands and giveaways. The aim, says summit
project leader Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley, is to
convey a serious message in a way that young people will
respond to positively.

“The point of this whole project
is to reach out to young New Zealanders and encourage them
to become part of the global youth smokefree movement.
Nothing like that exists in New Zealand and Kiwi youth need
to be part of the conversation.”

The category winners of
the ‘It’s My Life’ competition are:

Supreme
winner: Nicholas Humphries from Fiordland College for
his Quit Toolbox app

Pasifika Youth categoryWinner: Tiana
Wilson from Wellington Girls College for her Future
Generations poster.Runner-up and People’s Choice:
Tiana Weepu from Claudine Thevenet School for her collage
How long can you live?

Intermediate School
categoryWinner and People’s Choice: Team
BetterLife’s video Smokefree It’s My Life. The
team was made up of Charlotte Barber and Frances Wright from
Queen Margaret College.Runner-up: Charlotte Tilley from
Karori Normal School for her poster Why?

High
School categoryWinner: Nicholas Humphries from
Fiordland College for his Quit Toolbox
appRunner-up: Ryan Hartman from Waimea College for his
Be Free poster.People’s Choice: Maria Irinco
from Wellington Girls College for Smoking Kills the
Planet.Massey College of Business Scholarship for
best use of Communication Theory: Sylvi Low from Wellington
East Girls College for It’s Your
Decision.Certificate of Excellence: Hayley Fraser
from Wellington East Girls College for her Smoke Free
poster.Certificate of Excellence: Jake Barnett from
Wellington High School for his Who Needs Smoking?
video.

Tertiary categoryWinner: Georgia
Jones from University of Canterbury for her Weave your
own life app.Runner-up: Julia Gardner from Auckland
University for her Friendship poster.People’s
Choice: Fraser Gardner from AUT for his Katniss said No
poster.

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